A Last Letter
by arrant
Summary: A letter from Erik to Christine.


I watch you from above; I'm always watching you from above. And maybe it's a sin, and maybe it's the greatest sin I'll ever commit; a sin that fills my heart so cannot be left unacted upon. I watch as you dance, and I wonder how one can move with such grace; such agile flawlessness and ease possesses your small form. You are completely lost in your reverie; enraptured and invigorated with the dance; your feet follow the motions, unfaltering. Your fingers, so delicate… they sweep across the air and lift you as if you yearn to fly. Do you yearn to fly? I know that I long to do anything but; I long to simply descend and take you in my arms; I wish to act on a fallacy that has consumed me since first you sang for me, when you sang only for me. And even before that; even before I taught you how to bring forth your voice, how to wield it and touch with it the places of the common man's soul that he does not even know exist. And yet I know of these hidden places; my soul aches in the hollow of these voids every day. My soul is yours, Christine, it is only yours. Maybe at one time I was your angel; maybe I could feign a magic trick; maybe I could seem to be all around you, so softly caressing your voice with my own. Those days of innocence and naïveté; those warm and gentle days when I believed that I could simply reach out and take your hand. Was I not a human man then? Was I not a tangible being to you; was I no longer merely an empyreal longing; was I not only your angel? Would you allow me to be more? Oh, my dear, how you have kept me in this state of great unhappiness; your soft and gentle hands have placed me, with the greatest care, into a cage by which no key can release me; you alone hold the answer, my Christine, you. And it is you alone who have put me here, and it is you alone who are blind to what you have done. I do not blame you; your blindness allows your heart to mend. I feel myself aloft; I am always aloft. I have no way of reaching you, not through any magic mirrors or through rash murders; my foolish acts will get me nowhere. So I cry, Christine, I cry because I can see you but you can't see me. And that alone pains me more than any words you have left unspoken. Did I not imagine them; is it only in my head, that belief that you must have felt something more? I pray, for your sake, dearest, that you are simply living a lie, that you are simply contenting yourself to follow your chosen path with such ignorant bliss. You are such a child; you cannot see the outcomes of your actions; your soul is too soft and delicate to be bared; God himself could not stand to mar you with the sad, strange thoughts of a ghost. For I am only a ghost! Could you not simply lock me away in your mind, close me off to some distant corner of your memories; dub me as an irrational glimpse of something astral; a dream. I don't have to be real, Christine, oh, I don't have to be real. A life of longing does not dignify turning you away; does not dignify placing the blame on your shoulders and then scolding you as you fall. I know you will never see me; you will never see me as you once did. But, Christine, my dear Christine, will he ever see you? Will he ever allow your voice to fill his soul; will he feel in your palms the light that God must have sewn therein with golden drops of sunlight by the soft, flickering dance of a candle flame? Oh, how my head aches. I have written you letters; I have written you so many letters. Shredded, burned, drowned, what have I not done to them? Are the words on those dead scraps of parchment not tainted with jealousy, marred and biased with the hues of my anger and foolishness? For I am foolish in all that I do, Christine. I am a fool, and I can only lament that I was not your true angel; I did not possess the white wings of heaven with which to shield and protect you; I did not contain in my hands the soft, gentle, calming touch that could set a rabbit's beating heart to rest. I only have this face; my face. It is scarred and asperous and scabbed over with the pain that I myself have inflicted. It is hidden, and I pray that you will let its lingering image seep from your mind; please, my dear, put something better in its place. Hold your lover's hand, look up into _his_ eyes, and let _his_ words melt your heart. My soul is tainted beyond repair, and I know that even your halcyon touch cannot act as my antidote; this time, I cannot be saved. And oh, darling, how you have saved me in the past. You were not even aware of it, and yet you were all that I needed; you were the only thing in the world that kept my heart beating. Your voice filling the cavernous hall that is my home; your smile and the sun dancing in your eyes as you melded with your world. You were not meant to be draped in my shadows, Christine. I can wish and I can pray and I can beg of God to know why; I can fall to my knees and I can cry out, Why will she not be mine? You are the only who can complete me, and I have accepted this; I have allowed that knowledge to burn at my core and bind me to you; I have locked myself to your voice; I have trapped myself in your head, dangerously whispering words to you that, then, had no meaning. For I was only an angel, right? My words were so soft and tender that they shattered as you heard them; they quickly turned to glitter in your eyes and you did not, could not, see the honesty that laced them. You are so innocent, and your innocence had saved you; you are his and you are innocent together. So softly in his arms you lay, you don't dare question why you find no words to speak. Please; please deny that you ever felt anything for me, that you ever found my hideous face alluring. Entranced I have been, captivated simply by your aura. You have consumed me, dearest, and that is something that can never pass. You have taken my heart; it is in your hands. But, love, you cannot hold in your hands two hearts, and I am forced to accept as you drop mine; I am forced to stand and watch it lay broken at your feet. And yet I am not broken; not completely. You have made your choice, and I must respect that. But with my passing, I will have realized that you, and you alone, have shown me love; you have shared with me the sunlight that resides in your soul. You have shared with me your world; you have shared with me your soft words and you have shared with me your even softer touch. You have bared me for all that I am, and I do not regret that you could so easily turn away. These words hold no meaning for you, my dear, I know, and I have accepted that long before I chose to share them with you. Perhaps you may never even read this; I have no way of knowing. But if you do, Christine, if your eyes do find these words and you are forced to lose your delicate innocence because I have thrown upon you this knowledge, I ask only one thing of you. When you are in his arms, and when you feel, as I feel now, that you may have somehow made a mistake, some terrifying, horrible mistake, I only ask that you do not take it to heart; do not hinder yourself with the thought that you have done wrong. For you have not, my dear, and I pray that your eyes will never have to bare unbidden tears because you feel that you have wronged anyone in any way. You have done what your heart has asked of you, and you could do nothing else. Your heart is strong; it is so strong. And I only wish that I could have held it in my hands longer, that I could have allowed it to merge with my soul and allow it to beat throughout my body forever and even then when my body was no more. But even know, as I lay here and watch the stars overhead and wonder why they still dare to burn after so much has left me hollow and smoldering from the inside (because, Christine, my soul does still smolder, if only for you); I wonder if it is not your heart that has kept me living for so long. My own has died; it died at your feet as soon as you found yourself in your Vicomte's arms. But no more of these words, my love; no more. I have only come to say goodbye, in so many words. I pray for you, dearest, and I will continue to do so. I pray that one day, when the unkindly hand of God so desires to bring you to his palace of ashes (for I still do not believe that Heaven is white; it must be softer shades of brown and gray; all of the white and all of the innocence was poured into you, dear. Heaven is a desolate place without you, I know, and it will be eternally so until you join me there and bring back with you the white); oh, I will be waiting, Christine, I will be waiting. But for now I only wish you the most sincere happiness and love; I wish that you find in his arms the love and devotion that I seemed, in your eyes, to lack. Do not find fault here; this is of my own doing. I cannot go on like this; I choose not to. Do not fight your fate, Christine, for it is what you have chosen and I dare say it is where your heart lies. Fallacy, this is all such fallacy. I can take no more of this. Do not dare speak of this to anyone, my dear. I apologize for the burden I am hereby placing on your shoulders, but I hope you realize what, for you, and only for you, I am carrying to my grave.

I love you, my Christine, with all the madness and insane sincerity that we have shunned; I love you with the last bitter pieces of my heart. I curse you and I bless you; I wish only for your eternal happiness.


End file.
